


Sweet child of mine

by elisabethjj



Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, Babyfic but not like that, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, I killed Hayley, Motherhood, Surrogacy, Yes I understand biology-its a story about magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:28:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3271718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisabethjj/pseuds/elisabethjj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An untouched tumbler of bourbon, a heart that hasn't beat in a thousand years and nothing to do but wait. Caroline is fighting, Klaus is frozen like stone- the discontented wail of a newborn child pierces the grey morning and there's no rulebook for this kind of thing. Klaroline; set post season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: Well. This is weird. I... think I accidentally wrote baby-fic. Huh.
> 
> Warnings: Um, I killed someone in this. Plus it's kinda gross. And a bit twisted. I'm not even sure if I like it. I'm not even sure what it is.
> 
> :::
> 
> Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own TVD. The characters are probably quite glad about that.

The discontented wail of a newborn infant, wrenched from the comfort of the womb, pierces the early morning.

Klaus flinches, heart thudding like it hasn't in centuries. Across the room, Elijah sits forward and adjusts his shirt cuffs minutely. Only those very close to him would recognise he is a powder keg of excited, nervous energy.

'Niklaus,' Elijah breathes, turning bright eyes on his brother. Klaus cannot meet his gaze. He remains, as he has remained for the past eighteen and a half torturous hours, a silent stone figure in the old-fashioned armchair. An untouched tumbler of bourbon rests on the sideboard, inches from his hand. 'Niklaus,' Elijah urges him again. 'Your child is here.'

Klaus knows that, of course. He's listened to the whole wretched ordeal unravelling throughout the night. Banned from the birthing chambers on the first floor of the house; unwanted and helpless to do anything, for once in his long life. He's heard the witches chanting, his sister barking out orders, the other girls soothing and muttering and storytelling when it got too bad.

It wasn't an easy birth, from the sounds of it. More than once it crossed his mind that she might die. When she started cursing and groaning his fists had clenched at his sides. When the noise had stopped a few hours ago and her voice trailed off into a subdued feverish mutter, his face had frozen into the hollow mask that now confronted Elijah in the pale morning light.

'Nik,' Rebekah's voice startles him into looking up. She's grubby in her jeans and vaguely blood smeared sweater but she's glowing with happiness, looking like the young girl he hasn't seen in many a decade. Her arms hold a bundle of white blankets, encasing the newborn baby. He can smell his child—it's weird and unexpected—he can smell the baby and he recognises the scent of what is his. Family. Blood. Belonging. 'You have a son,' his sister tells him.

Klaus has killed hundreds of people. Some of them were children. Babies, even. He has a thousand years of blood on his hands. People he's tormented, people he's hurt and chased and tortured. He has killed people in the last week and yesterday he drained a seventeen year old girl to within an inch of her life, loving the taste of her fear and the rattle of her breath as she slipped towards oblivion.

'You have a son,' Rebekah says, and she's smiling, and there's blood on her t-shirt.

'Is she-' Klaus starts.

'Caroline's fine,' Rebekah says, her attention still fixed on the tiny boy wriggling in her arms. 'The old crones started removing the spell as soon as this little one was born. Caroline's healing now.'

Klaus breathes out relief and anger and fear that he doesn't know what to do with. Rebekah steps forward and Klaus steps back, but his sister is moving too quickly and his arms shoot out automatically to take the swaddled infant before he knows he's been tricked. Rebekah smiles triumphantly and goes to stand next to Elijah, hugging her eldest brother in their shared joy.

The baby is tiny and wrinkled. His eyes when they blink up at Klaus are pure blue. Klaus's son weighs nothing in his arms and makes a soft, happy sounding squeal as the Original Hybrid peers down at the tiny boy. Klaus has no idea what to do with this turn of events. He glances at his siblings in a kind of panic, but they are smiling indulgently and offer absolutely no help, and when he looks back at the small speck of a person he is holding the child is fast asleep.

'Rebekah,' a soft voice comes from the doorway. Elena looks exhausted, overwhelmed and a bit pissed off. Join the club. He allows his gaze to drift over the girl who has worked tirelessly helping Caroline this past night. He wants to thank her. He's not sure how.

She's staring oddly at him and there's something in her eyes he can't decipher. Never could. Part of why he's always disliked this doppelganger so much is how little he understands her. Listening to her with Caroline during the long hours of her labour, Klaus thinks he perhaps sees a little more of what Caroline, the Salvatore's, hell even Elijah seem to value in this girl.

'I need some more towels,' Elena is saying to his sister now, and Klaus frowns as he listens for Caroline and her attendants upstairs.

'I should—' Klaus mutters, handing the baby back to Rebekah and heading towards the great central hallway housing the staircase that will lead him to Caroline.

'Klaus, no!' Elena says, sticking a hand out towards him, but pulling it back before she makes contact, as if his touch might burn her. It might. He turns an expectant, annoyed glare on her. 'Caroline's still...um...' Elena breaks off and her cheeks flush pink. Klaus rallies his brain cells and thinks back to what he knows of the birthing process, feeling somewhat of an idiot when Elena's meaning hits him. She's clutching freshly laundered towels in her arms now. He wonders who washed them over the course of the night. Possibly, Elijah, he guesses.

'It'll be quick now,' Elena says, awkwardly. 'She's already started vampire healing again, so it's just going through the motions.'

Klaus smirks, nods tiredly and holds his palms up in the universal sign of I-am-backing-off. Elena's gone from the room at vampire speed before he even settles back down in his seat.

The baby appears to be sleeping now, content in Rebekah's arms with Elijah looking fondly on.

'What are you going to name him?' his brother asks.

:::

Caroline stares at the ceiling, willing her mind to quieten. Everything is agony, and the physical pain is barely the beginning of it. She knows her body is healing now. She can feel the skin and muscle knitting back together, strength seeping back into the body that had become exhausted over her extended childbirth.

Childbirth, indeed. Caroline scoffs under her breath, fighting back angry tears that sting her eyes. She feels empty. It should be a relief, and maybe it is. Maybe she can go home and pretend this nightmare never happened.

She thought she would die, last night. She thought she would die for this tiny person that had lived inside her; this precious, awful thing she hadn't asked for. She thinks, maybe, that if Elena hadn't been there at each dark moment to pull her back to herself, then she might have died. But perhaps that is just melodramatic.

The bedroom is quiet now, but there's too much going on inside her head to find any peace. Rebekah has finally left, thank God, to be with her brothers downstairs. She'd whisked the baby away at its first cry, when Caroline had feebly pushed the shorter midwife's arms away as she'd tried to lay the baby to her breast.

'It's not my child,' Caroline had whispered, and turned her head away. The taller midwife had gasped and Elena had squeezed Caroline's hand. The three Deveraux witches had ignored her as they prepared candles and nasty smelling herbs for their incantations. Rebekah had glanced awkwardly at the blonde girl who had just finished pushing her nephew into the world, and then swept out of the room as soon as the baby had been swaddled.

Now, the midwives are cleaning up the last of the afterbirth mess. The witches are finished with their strange rituals and the crone amongst them, the olive skinned, black-haired hippie grandmother type who had started all this in the first place, moves gracefully to Caroline's bedside as the midwife disappears out of the door.

'I am sorry for your suffering, child,' she says, but Caroline rolls her eyes and laughs, a harsh, painful and mirthless sound.

'Don't,' she bites out, feeling strength flowing back into her body and bonding with the cold, sad, anger she has been holding onto throughout the night. 'You did this to me for your own, twisted purposes and you didn't care that it hurt me as long as your coven got what it wanted. You're no better than him. Evil.'

The witch flinches as though physically struck, but stands her ground.

'You may not believe me,' she says, 'but I wish there had been another way. The seer is never wrong on such matters. Without you, the child would have died and—'

Caroline tries to rally herself to face the hag down, but is stopped in her tracks by Elena's cold, angry voice.

'Get out,' Elena says, moving to Caroline's side and setting a stack of clean towels on the dresser. She turns and stares down the crone and the two younger Deveraux cousins, letting her eyes turn black and veiny, and her fangs elongate into a vicious snarl. 'You've put Caroline through enough. You've done what you came to do so get the hell out of this house, right the fuck now.'

Caroline sinks into the bed, and lets Elena runs the unwanted women out of her room. She hears Rebekah finish the job downstairs, ushering the three New Orleans witches out of the house with acid dripping from her ultra polite words. With her concentration focused on downstairs, she inadvertently picks up the tiny snuffle of a sigh from the sleeping baby, and a sharp pain stabs in her gut. Easing onto her rapidly healing side, Caroline sobs angry tears into the bed sheet and doesn't even protest when Elena sinks onto the bed with her, wrapping her friend up in her arms and murmuring soothing noises into her sweat-damp blonde hair.

'Drink some blood,' Elena says, when Caroline has quietened. A blood bag with a bright yellow straw jabbed into it is pressed into Caroline's hands and she loses herself for a few minutes in the taste and the smell and the rush of life force that is so intoxicating. For the first time in months, she feels like a vampire again.

'What is he?' she asks Elena suddenly.

'Beautiful,' Elena replies instinctively, and then bites her lip. 'Sorry.' She looks hesitantly at Caroline. 'I don't know. He just looks like a baby. He has some hair, I think. Blue eyes.'

Caroline smiles sadly.

'I hate him,' she says, but Elena knows she doesn't mean the child.

:::

Six months ago

This wasn't how she'd expected the weekend to go.

When Stefan had said, 'Let's visit New Orleans,' Caroline had envisioned sightseeing, jambalaya, lots of pretending not to notice Stefan and Rebekah sneaking off together for extended periods of time and, possible, some semi awkward and sweepingly romantic conversations with the man who had proclaimed himself to be her last love.

Not this: a tense, angry face-off on the front porch between a coven of witches, the Original siblings and an apparently pregnant she-wolf stuck in the middle of the tug-o-war.

'Wait, the kid is Klaus's?' Stefan says, doubtfully, as Rebekah hushes him and Klaus glares.

'How dare you?' he practically spits at Hayley, who cowers back under the force of his anger. 'I told you what would happen if you flaunted this situation to manipulate me.'

Caroline feels sick.

Hayley is pregnant with Klaus's baby. Klaus can make babies.

Klaus has slept with Hayley.

'What..?' Caroline gasps, conflicting emotions glazing into one mindless jumble inside her.

'Caroline,' Klaus turns worriedly to her. 'Please just let me explain, love. After I've dealt with these unwelcome guests.' His gaze snaps back to Hayley and Caroline follows his eyeline. An odd, twisting sensation stirs inside as she watches Hayley clasp her arms protectively over the protruding curve of her stomach, where she has begun to swell with Klaus's child.

'I'm warning you, Hybrid,' the raven-haired crone of the coven says, stepping forward on tired limbs with fire blazing in her eyes. 'We have done what is necessary to ensure the protection of this child. The special birth is foretold and the babe will come safely into the world, whether you like it or not!'

'I do not enjoy your pathetic threats,' Klaus sneers. Caroline can tell that fury is building in him from the way his voice gets more controlled and detached.

'Be reasonable, Klaus.' Hayley manages to achieve sounding scared and pissed off at the same time. 'You can't expect to keep me a dirty little secret forever. I'm carrying your child!'

'Sweetheart,' Klaus says, coldly, 'you very much underestimate the hold that has over me. In fact, right now, it's mostly an inconvenience.'

That's when it happens, you see. All hell breaks loose.

Klaus lunges for Hayley; Elijah's eyebrows shoot up as he lunges for Klaus; the witches start screeching in indignation; and Rebekah bitch slaps the one nearest to her, seemingly just for the hell of it. Klaus pulls himself up short, inches from where Hayley's shaking in her cheap boots.

Stefan quirks a mildly alarmed glance at Caroline and opens his mouth to say something, but it never comes out. Or maybe it does, but Caroline's too busy dealing with the wrenching agony that's twisting in her stomach and causing blood to thunder deafeningly in her ears.

Across the porch, Hayley's eyes have rolled back in her head and her body has flexed upwards in an alarming contortion.

She drops like a stone, dead weight on the porch decking.

Caroline hits the ground a second later and rolls to her side, clutching her stomach and howling as her insides split apart and rearrange themselves. For a moment, she's reminded of when she watched the Hybrid's forcing their change over and over again, trying to break the sire bond all those months ago. She can see Hayley's wide eyed, lifeless gaze through the muddle of feet and legs between them.

She vomits, blood and god knows what spewing onto the ground and spraying someone's jean clad leg in the process. Nausea and dizziness grip her body. Weakness, like her human self.

'Caroline!' Stefan, or Klaus, or both of them are down beside her in the filth, their horrified faces swimming in front of her.

The crone is whispering, and the words swirl loudly in Caroline's ears, but she can't decipher them. 'What,' Caroline tries to say, and the black-haired old woman shakes her head sadly.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it all stops. The world right's itself.

'What did you do to her?' Klaus is up again and roaring in the crone's face.

'What we must,' hisses the witch. 'I warned you Hybrid, the spell was already cast. The spirits protect the baby. Now, they have acted to make sure you will do the child no harm as it prepares to enter this world.'

There's noise, and Caroline shuts her eyes against the commotion as she hears the witches leave. Klaus is smashing decking furniture, impotent with rage against the witches he cannot harm. Eliljah cannot calm him down.

'Hey,' Stefan says, softly, leaning over Caroline. 'I'm going to pull you up, ok?'

Caroline nods and lets Stefan pull her to her feet. His hands come up to the side of her face, scanning her for injuries. Finding something of her normal spark returning to Caroline's eyes, he quickly pulls his friend into a hug.

They both freeze.

'Uh, Klaus,' Stefan says.

'What?' Klaus is by their side in a flash, moody and anxious after Caroline's temporary incapacitation.

Slowly, without his eyes leaving Caroline's, Stefan eases back from the blonde girl.

Caroline and Klaus both follow Stefan's eyes down to Caroline's waist.

The gentle bump curves conspicuously out from the fitted blouse she dressed in that morning. Her hand automatically moves to cradle the shape and, in an awful moment of revelation, she can feel the child growing within her.

'What the hell?' she gasps. Her horrified gaze snaps up to Klaus's own gobsmacked expression.

'Bloody hell,' Rebekah says, 'that's weird.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do acknowledge that the subject matter of motherhood, surrogacy, adoptive or step-parenthood and all that is fraught with emotion and can I just reiterate that this is fiction- I am just trying to imagine what Caroline might be going through with this and am not trying to make any statements about what makes a 'real' parent or anything like that. If you don't like it, please feel free to not read any further!
> 
> Disclaimer: TVD and The Originals are both owned by people who are not me.

Caroline has, encouraged by Elena, drained three blood bags by the time Klaus makes it to the bedroom door.

After months of being stuck out of phase, somewhere half way between human and vampire, Caroline's blood lust is rising and she's glad for it. The Spirits of the witches who protected Klaus's spawn had altered her body so that she was human enough to nourish and grow a child in her womb, but the side effects had not been a barrel of laughs for the blonde girl. The blood that her hybridised body still demanded had started to taste increasingly unpleasant over the past weeks, not to mention her vampire abilities seemed to come and go as frequently as her mood swings.

Of course, for Caroline to actually give birth to the child, the witches had cast a spell to remove her healing powers temporarily. It was, apparently, the only way to stop her body recovering itself too quickly to allow the birthing process to occur. Caroline was pretty sure the Spirits who had played havoc on her physiology for the length of the pregnancy would have this covered, but neither the coven nor the Originals were risking the baby at this late stage on an uncertainty. So Caroline had ended up with Agnes—the black haired, bead wearing witch crone—her great-niece Sophie and her granddaughter Ellen chanting round a mystical triangle while she pushed Hayley's child out of her hijacked body.

They are all gone now though, and Caroline's weakness has gone with them. She can feel the muscles in her abdomen, the bruising inside and the tearing between her legs all healing up. Everything is tightening, smoothing, restoring now. In another few minutes, Caroline thinks, nobody would be able to tell she has carried and birthed a child. There will be nothing left at all.

A half-sob escapes her, and she doesn't really know why.

'Caroline,' Klaus says, from the doorway. He looks almost happy, and also kind of uncertain. She's fairly sure she's never seen him look either of those things before.

She passes the empty blood bag back to Elena and concentrates on withdrawing her fangs. Her gaze flickers down to the sweet-smelling tiny scrap of life currently sleeping in Klaus's arms and suddenly her stomach feels like lead.

'If you want to talk,' she says, coldly, 'then ask Elena to take the baby downstairs. I don't want it in here.' Hurt flashes in Klaus's deep blue eyes. He looks to Elena and she sighs, nods and moves to take the child from Klaus. She gives Caroline a small smile before leaving the room.

So then it's just the two of them, and Klaus is making his way slowly to Caroline's bedside, all calm and non-threatening, like she's a wounded animal liable to lash out any second. She supposes that's how he sees her.

'How are you feeling, love?' he asks gently.

Caroline snorts.

'Great,' she says, sarcastically. She waves her hand at the pile of empty blood bags. 'Your witches removed the spell. I'm sure you heard.' She glares at him defiantly. 'I'm nearly good as new already.'

Klaus nods, glances down at his hands where they are joined in front of him. He'd wanted to be there by her side tonight, she knew, but thankfully he'd adhered to her outright ban on him coming anywhere near the room while she gave birth. Having Rebekah there was the compromise Caroline had unwillingly made.

'I want to thank you, Caroline. I know... It could hear it wasn't easy tonight. I'm aware the past few months haven't exactly been happy ones for you.' He looks up, and his eyes are brightly burning as they meet Caroline's cool gaze. 'What you've done though, sweetheart, I could never thank you enough for this chance you've given me. He's... He's amazing.'

'Congratulations,' Caroline says, tightly. She can feel the walls of ice stacking up around her heart, protecting her from all this and she clings to that protection. She cannot afford to let him in and this—Klaus, like this, all passion and raw emotion—is dangerous territory.

Klaus blinks. His hands run through his hair, ruffling the dirty blond locks into disarray.

'Rebekah says you haven't held him,' he questions, cautiously.

'No,' Caroline replies. 'Why should I? He's not mine to hold.' Klaus sighs, heavily and reaches out to take Caroline's hand, where it's resting on the bedcovers. She quickly yanks it out of his reach. Thank goodness her vampire reactions have returned now. Caroline turns her face away from Klaus.

'Can I leave now?' she asks. Out of the corner of her eyes she sees Klaus stiffen momentarily.

'What?' he asks, hoarsely.

'The witches' barrier spell that has kept me trapped in New Orleans for six months,' Caroline states, blankly. 'Is it down now?' She clenches her fists in her lap and glares at him. 'Your brood mare's done her job. Can I leave now?'

Klaus looks appalled. It's a funny look on a person who's tortured men to death and made blood sacrifices of teenagers to further his own powers.

'Where will you go?'

'I don't know,' she shrugs. 'Anywhere away from here. Maybe Italy?'

'I have a villa—' he offers, but she cuts his words short with an incredulous laugh.

'No,' she says, bitterly. 'I think I've spent enough time in your houses.'

Klaus rolls his eyes, helplessly.

'Then let me book you a hotel suite, wherever you like. With your friends, if you prefer. Have some time to unwind.'

Caroline sighs and shakes her head.

'Klaus,' she says, quietly. 'Don't you get it? I don't want you to do anything. I just want to leave.' She doesn't have to look to know the depth of emotion swirling in the Hybrid's eyes. Klaus never took rejection well.

'But, the boy—' he growls. If he lets her go gallivanting around the globe, how will he bring her back again? How will he make sure his son gets to know the only mother he has left?

'Your boy,' Caroline reminds him. 'Yours and Hayley's.'

'Hayley is dead,' Klaus says, exasperatedly.

'Not my fault!' Caroline replies, eyes flashing annoyance. 'You're the one who knocked the wolf girl up. You're the one who couldn't keep his temper well enough for the Spirits to believe you wouldn't rip her and your unborn child to shreds!'

'How many times do I have to apologise for unwittingly placing you in this position?' Klaus objects. 'It's not like I knew any of this would happen, could happen even. You think I don't see the sacrifices you've made this year, that I don't realise all you've done for this family? I never meant for you to be involved with any of this.'

'Exactly,' Caroline states, hollowly. Something is breaking inside her at the truth of his words. 'I'm not the girl you slept with. I'm not the girl you got pregnant and, you know what, you can't just decide to make me a second choice backup mother to that kid just because your tantrums got his real mother killed.'

Klaus clenches his jaw and Caroline knows she has to nip this in the bud before it escalates into the same argument they've had a dozen times since she realised she was carrying Klaus's child. It doesn't matter now. She's free, she thinks. She hopes.

'Klaus,' she sighs, sinking back against the oversized pillows is she propped up against. 'It's been a long night. I just pushed a child out of my vagina and I'd kind of like to get some rest. Can we talk about this later?'

She watches as Klaus rubs his hand over the scruff on his face, and nods as patiently as he can.

'Of course, love,' he says. 'You should rest. I'm glad you're healing quickly.' He stands, glancing at her once more with those bottomless, emotion filled eyes that Caroline has never learned how to deal with. 'Will you see him when you've rested?'

Caroline steels herself not to flinch.

'Maybe,' she says. She waits until the sound of Klaus's retreat has faded before pulling back the bedcovers and stripping out of her sleep shirt. By the time Elena makes it back up to the room, Caroline is dressed and busy pulling on her boots.

'What are you doing?' Elena asks, confused.

'I can't stay here,' Caroline says, keeping her voice low and, hopefully, unheard by the Originals downstairs. 'I just can't. Not one minute longer.' She looks up at her friend, who has been the greatest comfort she could have asked for these past months, let alone the most recent awful hours. She knows that she owes Elena her sanity and, probably, a lot more than that. It's a debt that Caroline fully intends to repay, as long as they are both living. 'Are you coming with me?'

'Of course,' Elena says, simply. She grabs her bag from under the dresser and shoves a few things into it, then glances at Caroline. 'Aren't you bringing anything?'

'There's nothing here I need,' Caroline says.

Elena nods, understanding as ever.

'You want to take the front door, then, or...' she trails off and motions to the large sash window by Caroline's bed. It's a full storey drop to the garden below, but Caroline seems pretty much back to her usual vampire strength and, let's face it, they've both had enough of the Original family for now. Possibly forever.

Caroline smirks.

The girls are half way across the city before Elijah comments on the lack of noise from the upper floor. Klaus stares silently at the curtains rustling minutely in the muggy air that flows through the open window, standing in the room that still smells of the woman he loves.

He kills that night, but Caroline is still gone.

:::

**Six months ago**

'You killed her,' Caroline snarls. 'An innocent girl. This baby's mom!'

Well, maybe innocent is a bit of a stretch, but then who the hell is innocent these days? Hayley had manipulated Klaus into slaughtering twelve hybrids—her so called friends—to find her family. Then again, Caroline killed twelve witches to save Bonnie. She isn't in Hayley's fan club, and she could definitely have lived a cheerful eternity without knowing Klaus and the she-wolf had got hot and sweaty together, but still. Hayley didn't deserve the fate these witches had doled out to her.

Sophie Deveraux looks guilty, but determined, as Caroline faces her down across the courtyard table.

They're in some kind of witchy hangout in the French quarter. A cobbled square surrounded by the rear entrances to buildings that the witches live or work in. Sophie's restaurant is one of them; the smell of spiced stew wafting out from the open kitchen door and mixing with the incenses in the courtyard. Candles and flowers decorate the square, scattered around the seating areas and the large open fire pit that could have been for cooking or magical purposes.

There are at least half a dozen of Sophie's coven sisters in the yard, but they didn't look too concerned as Caroline stormed in to confront them. She guesses they aren't going to get their beads in a bunch over a three month pregnant lady getting narky with them.

'We didn't know Hayley would die,' Sophie argues, teeth clicking in a way that irritates Caroline. Actually, everything about this girl irritates her—the wide eyes, the smoky voice... heck, even the defiant set of her jaw sets Caroline's fangs on edge.

'Well that's the problem when you mess with forces beyond your understanding, sweetie,' Caroline glares at the dark-haired girl. 'Trust me on this, I have a little experience with magical FUBARs. Which is, by the way, the situation we're in now. So you better get your witchy friends together and fix this right the hell now.'

'We can't,' Sophie says. 'The spell is cast and cannot be undone. The Spirits guard the child now. They will do whatever is necessary to ensure the child is safe and protected until Klaus is ready to fulfil that role.'

'Newsflash, brainiac,' Caroline says, incredulously. 'Klaus wants nothing to do with this baby. He'd as soon as kill it as lift a finger to protect it.'

'That's why the Spirits have acted,' Sophie explains, her jaw jutting again. Caroline fights back the urge to slap her across her pretty face. She figures Sophie will cross paths again with Rebekah soon enough anyway, and the Original sister is much freer with her gratuitous violence. 'We could not have known how the Spirits would act to protect the child, only that they would do so. The saw that Klaus would have killed Hayley and the unborn baby with her, so they made a decision. Hayley is an unfortunate sacrifice made for the greater good.'

Caroline scoffs at the brunette's idealism.

'But why me?' she asks. 'Why do the Spirits want to set me up as Klaus's next victim? If he wants this child dead then how do the mighty witch Spirits think they are going to protect us both from Klaus?'

'Don't you see, child?' The voice comes from behind Caroline, and she whirls to see Sophie's great-aunt, the crone of the New Orleans coven, standing right there. Her eyes are bright in the candle light and there's a constant aura of magic about this woman that makes her seem almost otherworldly. Caroline doesn't like her much, either.

'You are the protection,' the crone continues. 'You have the Hybrid's heart. Klaus loves you. He will protect you from any enemy; kill for you, fight for you. As long as that baby grows within your womb Klaus will keep you both from any harm.'

'Oookay,' Caroline blinks, overwhelmed by the idiocy of that statement. 'So, ignoring the fact that you are crazier than I thought if you actually believe that,' (the memory of a metal pole skewering her torso and Klaus's fangs slicing into her neck runs briefly through her mind) 'what the fuck gives you the right to mess with people in this way?' She shakes her head in disbelief. 'Hayley is dead because of you. Her child... Her and Klaus's baby is growing inside by body right now! This is beyond screwed up!'

The crone smiles, sadly, and reaches a placating hand out towards Caroline.

'I am truly sorry for the distress this causes you, young one,' she says. 'The Spirits make their decisions based on things that you and I have no knowledge of. They see things that we cannot comprehend. The Seer of this coven foretold that the Sprits protection would be required to see this special chid safely into the world and so here we are, safe in their hands, but at the mercy of forces that move in mysterious ways. We must trust that every action is for the greater good, Caroline.'

Caroline's hand moves to the bump she hasn't got used to feeling yet.

'But...' she whispers, burdened with the knowledge that the witches will not help her. This is going to happen. She is going to have Klaus's baby. 'It's not fair,' she says. It isn't fair. Her heart is aching because Klaus and Hayley slept together; made a baby together. She knows she was with Tyler and she turned Klaus down at every turn, but it hurts and she can't bring herself to examine why it hurts so damn much. She can barely get her head around that and now Hayley's dead and Caroline is suddenly three months pregnant and there is a heartbeat inside her womb that she can hear. A tiny life depending on her for survival. Klaus's baby.

It's awful and it's cruel because, of all the good things being a vampire has brought into Caroline's world, the one thing she's mourned is her chance to be a mother. Now she can feel a child growing inside her and it's his child, and... and it's not hers. Caroline isn't going to be a mother—she's an incubator for a baby that the man she (doesn't love) feels all kinds of confusing things for made with a dead werewolf who she can't find it in herself to like.

'You'll understand soon enough, Caroline,' Agnes says, soothingly. 'The child you carry is special. You'll see soon enough.'

:::

**Present time**

She finds out from Stefan, who hears it from Rebekah, that the child is a werewolf. Of course, Caroline thinks, as her heart breaks quietly. Both of his parents were werewolves. Even Klaus started out life that way and, well, you can't be born a vampire, can you.

Klaus has named the boy Lukas. It seems a small name for such an important child.


	3. Chapter 3

Caroline's kind of surprised when Hayley turns up in her Amsterdam hotel apartment. For starters, no-one except her mom and Elena know what country Caroline's in, let alone where she is staying. For seconds, Hayley is dead.

'What are you doing, Caroline?' Hayley asks, eyes all freakishly large and sad looking.

'At the moment? Reading this book,' Caroline replies. Hayley may be a ghost or whatever, but she's still Hayley and Caroline will never not be irritated by the sound of her voice.

Hayley rolls her eyes and her ghost self crosses the room, plonking down on the barrel chair next to the loveseat where Caroline is curled up.

'I mean, why aren't you with Lukas?'

Something with sharp and ragged edges churns inside Caroline and she counts to ten to try and hang onto the calm, not-dying-inside facade she's perfected these past weeks.

'Really?' she retorts, tightly. 'God, Hayley. Maybe because he's your son, not mine, and he's nothing to do with me?' There go those jagged edges again, piercing, piercing.

'Of course he is,' Hayley frowns, her voice expressing enough emotional turmoil to bring Caroline up short. 'You carried him inside you—Caroline, you nourished him and gave him life.'

'Not my choice,' Caroline says firmly, rising to her feet. 'I know what happened to you wasn't fair, but—'

'Is this because of Klaus and me?' Hayley asks, interrupting Caroline and throwing her off track. The blonde girl looks at her askance, horrified she has brought the subject up.

'What? I don't give a crap about you and Klaus bumping uglies,' Caroline huffs, willing the lie not to ring hollow in her words. 'Get over yourself Hayley.'

Seriously, is she actually arguing with a ghost? How much more strange and screwed up can this situation get? Even halfway across the world Caroline apparently can't escape this fucking mess.

Hayley gives her a sympathetic look that makes Caroline want to yank her trashy ghost hair out of her scalp.

'Look,' Hayley attempts to explain. 'I don't pretend to understand Klaus, or know what he feels for you. I can tell you one thing though—that night, back in Mystic Falls, meant nothing to either of us. I get that you're hurt, for whatever reason—'

'Really, please stop talking,' Caroline cuts in, cringing.

'—but I swear to you the only good or meaningful thing to happen that night is that we made Lukas. Caroline, you can't abandon him. He's just a baby and he's going to need you so much.' The brunette's eyes shine with unshed tears and Caroline can feel the raw hurt in her words. After months of suppressing her own pain and turmoil, the last thing she wants is to deal with the wolf girl's ghostly unfinished business.

'I'm sorry,' Caroline says, voice icy. 'That child has Klaus and Rebekah and Elijah to look after him—pretty much the most powerful beings in the world. He'll be fine.' Well, physically, she self-edits. 'He's not my problem.'

'What do you mean?' Hayley says, shaking her head in disbelief.

'Exactly that—not my concern,' Caroline explains, exasperated. 'I don't really get why I have to explain this to you of all people. You were his actual mom. I may have been forced to be the incubator but that doesn't make me your go-to replacement, ok? Jeez. No matter how much I might have wished for it to be otherwise, six months of sitting around stroking my belly and having cravings for freaking anchovy pancakes doesn't suddenly make that baby mine.' Huffing, she turns away from Hayley with a hand to her face, hoping to shield evidence of the tears she can feel pricking at her eyeballs. She hadn't meant to say that to Hayley—hell, she hadn't spoken those feelings out loud to anyone before this moment.

'Caroline,' Hayley says cautiously, moving towards her. 'You know that isn't true, right?'

The vampire peers at her, around her hands, wondering what the hell Hayley is talking about.

'Oh god,' Hayley whispers, as she realises the truth. 'You don't know, do you? You really don't. He didn't tell you.'

'Tell me what?' Caroline asks, flatly.

'Jeez, that bastard,' Hayley mutters. 'Guess I shouldn't be surprised.'

'Tell me what?' Caroline raises her voice slightly this time.

'The baby,' Hayley says. 'The spell that the witches cast, it called upon the Spirits to protect the child. They were manipulated into it, though. The Spirits wanted the coven to cast such a powerful spell in order to allow them to influence events. Caroline, they're the reason Lukas was conceived—they found the "loophole" in nature that allowed a thousand year old vampire who'd recently accessed his werewolf side to father a child. They used me as the conduit because I was a convenient living body for him to knock up—Klaus is more likely to drain a human girl than sleep with her and they couldn't use a vampire. Then they sacrificed me so that Lukas could be protected by you, when the coven's ancestral magic could channel enough power for the spell.'

Caroline reels with this unexpected deluge of information. Is Hayley saying that Klaus knew this the whole time? They'd lived in the same city, seeing each other on an almost daily basis, for nearly six months and he hadn't thought to mention he had all this knowledge about the magical craptastic pregnancy from hell?

'Lukas is as much your son as he is mine,' Hayley says, looking less than one hundred percent thrilled with the situation. 'That's how he was deliberately created: part werewolf, part vampire, part human and, now, empowered with the magic of the Spirits. He's going to be the most powerful little boy in existence, Caroline, and part of him was made from you. Please help him. You can't let them hurt him.'

'If he's as powerful as all that,' Caroline wonders, dazed in the light of Hayley's confusing and painful declaration, 'then who could hurt him?'

'Silas.' Hayley says, locking eyes with Caroline. 'He—' Breaking off, she glances over her shoulder, looking at something out of Caroline's realm of vision, and when she glances back she speaks hurriedly. 'Go to Klaus, please Caroline. Please. Lukas's life may depend on you and Klaus getting your shit together and protecting him. I don't know if I can come back again. Tell him—' She reaches out suddenly and grasps at Caroline's hand. It doesn't connect, as such, but Caroline can kind of feel her touch on a different, ethereal level. 'Tell him I love him,' Hayley says, eyes bright, smiling at Caroline.

Then she's gone, and Caroline isn't sure which way is up anymore.

:::

**Six months ago**

'Get it out of her,' Klaus snarls at the witch he currently has pinned to the wall by her throat. He thinks it's one of Sophie-Ann's cousins, but he's not sure because he didn't really check before picking up the nearest one on his way into the decrepit old crypt where the coven has convened this evening.

'Klaus, please put her down,' Agnes says, as she appears next to him. Her mouth is pursed in disapproval and all Klaus can think about is that he would rip the spine straight out of her body if he didn't need them to reverse whatever they have done to Caroline first.

'I'll put her down when you get that thing out of Caroline's body,' Klaus says, in that clipped, terrifyingly angry tone that almost makes him seem on the verge of cheerful. The tone that means he barely has his shit together and it's all up for grabs because he could do anything at any moment. Kiss you or kill you. In the case of the witches, it's not likely to be kiss. 'Or better yet,' Klaus muses, 'I could slowly drain the life out of her while the rest of you get started helping Caroline. If she's not fixed by the time I've finished my dinner, I'll move on to one of your other little mates.'

The girl is beginning to turn a nasty shade of oxygen-deprived under his iron grip, but Klaus keeps squeezing for a moment longer before releasing her with a dramatic flourish. The witch falls to the ground at his feet, bruised and gasping for breath. Klaus smirks at the frightened faces around the room and levels a truly nasty glare at Agnes, since she seems to be the voice of the coven.

'So, hop to it then sweetheart,' he says, coldly. Without so much as glancing down, he boots the injured witch in the stomach—just to drive his point home. They will undo what has been done to Caroline, or he will destroy them without prejudice. In no righteous world should he be spawning a child, much less torturing Caroline with the evidence of his indiscretion and the taunting reminder of what she, as a vampire, can never have. It's wrong, even by Klaus's standards. He hates being manipulated and he hates being backed into a corner. Even more than that, he hates how much he dislikes seeing Caroline is such distress.

Fury rises in Agnes's countenance, but to give the witch her due she stays calm. That's no mean feat in the face of a pissed off Klaus.

'You have some nerve, Hybrid,' Agnes says, bravely meeting Klaus's angry gaze. 'You tear through the world for a millennium—taking what you want, from whomever you want—and think that nothing can touch you. You kill and hurt and destroy whatever you touch, yet are arrogant to believe there are no consequences to your actions. That you answer to no-one.'

'How dare you,' Klaus scoffs, coldly. 'I answer to no insipid, meddlesome Witch Spirits.'

Agnes appears unimpressed.

'If you really want to understand what is happening to Caroline and why, I suggest you follow me,' she tells him.

Agnes leads Klaus into a chamber far back in the depths of the crypt. It reeks of stale incense and the air is strangely heavy. Klaus can feel the power in the room; the weight of supernatural presence is impressive, even to a being of Klaus's experiences.

'Ask the Spirits yourself,' Agnes says to Klaus. 'As much as you may threaten and hurt my coven, the spell we have cast cannot be undone. The child is in the hands of the Spirits now. Bargain with them, if you must, but do not be surprised if you don't like what you hear.'

:::

'You reap what you sow, Hybrid,' is the first thing the Spirits say to him.

The whirling, swirling, kaleidoscope of shadows had started almost as soon as Agnes stepped out of the chamber, leaving Klaus far from alone. Klaus can only assume they are doing it to disorientate and piss him off, so he grits his teeth and waits it out. Soon enough, the Spirits speak; their many voices coming together in an ugly-beautiful cacophony that seeps inside Klaus's skin, imprinting words on his bones.

It's bloody irritating. All in all, he's not a fan.

'Fine,' he challenges them, 'I'm the big bad and you think I deserve my comeuppance. What about Caroline, though? She's the very essence of all that is pure and good. The girl would probably risk her own life to save a bloody puppy.' He glances around, trying to lock onto one of the moving, unstable shapes long enough to see what they are. 'Christ, what about Hayley? Where's your moral bloody high ground when you snap your fingers and she falls down dead.'

'Her death concerns you?' The Spirits ask. He rolls his eyes at what they chose to take from his whole outburst.

'Not really,' he admits, because he gives even less of a flying monkey what the Spirits think of him than he gave about Hayley's existence. He hadn't hated her or anything. Didn't really even think much about her at all really until she was all pregnant and in his face, loitering inconveniently when Klaus was trying to get his head around everything, including how he was going to tell Caroline. 'Just pointing out your hypocrisy. I might be an evil dick, but at least I'm upfront about it,' Klaus sneers.

'Then we will be upfront about your current situation,' the Spirit voices half whisper/ half chant at him. It grates in his ears and sounds like music at the same time. 'You think we are the Spirits Ancestors of this coven, Hybrid, but you are mistaken. You feel our power. It speaks to your blackened soul.'

Klaus cannot disagree. The room pulses with ancient energy to match and even exceed his own. He hasn't felt such potent magic since the night his mother turned he and his siblings into blood-drinking immortal monsters, over a thousand years previously.

'We are the Spirit Guardians of Nature Herself,' the Voices ring out. 'We were here long before your kind, Niklaus Mikaelson, and we do not fear you. We intervene only when the balance of nature, the tentative marriage of light and darkness, is threatened, as it is now. Hybrid, you intercede on behalf of Caroline and yourself. What you do not see is that We neither enjoy nor flinch from causing suffering—We will do what is just and what must be done to restore the balance.'

'What the bloody hell are you talking about?' Klaus snarls, getting a bad feeling about this.

'You, Hayley and even Caroline helped the Bennett witch establish an Expression triangle—the most powerful form of the dark magics. Because of you, a great evil walks this Earth again. Silas will yet rain down destruction enough to irrevocably alter the balance of nature in this world and there is none, not even you, Hybrid, who can put him down. This is what you have been instrumental in causing, all of you. Through deceit and murder—through placing selfish love and desires, fears and ego, above the greater good.'

'So, what?' Klaus lashes out, stashing this information to think about later when he isn't surrounded by swirling Spirit shadows. Of all the people he has killed in his time, is this about twelve dead hybrids? Of all the people Caroline hasn't killed, is this about her one mistake borne of love for her friend? 'This is vengeance, then?'

'This is your atonement,' the Voices say, without hesitation.'This child—your child, Niklaus— is the only hope to defeat Silas and restore the balance of Nature. The child will be stronger than you have ever seen in your time on Earth. The power of his mother's sacrifice along with the strength of her werewolf lineage; the blood of the Original vampires and it's father's affinity to the darkness; Caroline's humanity and the light that bonds it to her: to all of this we will add our own gift—this child will be our Heir and possess great magic.'

'I don't understand,' Klaus says, faltering under the weight of such a monumental revelation.

'Hayley has atoned by giving her life for this special child,' say the Spirits. 'You, in your temper and violence, would have destroyed her and your unborn baby and along with them this world's hope to defeat Silas would have died. Caroline atones by giving now, in a different way, her life for the protection of this baby. She is part of the child now. Her trials have just begun.'

'And me?' Klaus demands, his top lip curling into a defiant sneer. 'How have you decided I should atone for my sins?'

'You will love your child,' comes the Voices reply. 'You will love him and yet, when he has righted the wrong you have done, you will be unable to save him.'


	4. Chapter 4

'How long have you been back?'

Caroline looks up from her coffee and squints to see Elijah through the sharp glare of morning light. He drops elegantly into the seat next to her and clasps his hands, patient but unwavering as ever. Sighing, Caroline drags a spoon round the frothy top of her drink. She's not exactly been hiding from Klaus and his family since she got back to New Orleans, but she's not sure she was ready to see any of them yet. She's not even sure if she should be here, in the very town she spent all those months wishing she could escape. There aren't words to describe the confusion Caroline is feeling and Elijah, with his infinite wisdom and clarity, can make her feel out of her depth on a normal day.

'A few days,' she admits. He probably knows the answer anyway and, really, what's the point in lying. She glances up again and is taken aback by how warm and welcoming his expression is. Elijah is a very charming monster, but he's used to getting his own way. 'I'm not staying,' she says, hastily, lest he gets any ideas and starts spreading them around the place. And, yes, she's a little bit proud of herself for standing up to the honourable Elijah Mikaelson, who rips hearts out of chests just as niftily as his less mannered siblings. Though he's not as messy about it, at least.

'Oh?' the Original enquires, politely. 'So, why have you returned then, Caroline?'

Well, that's the question, isn't it? The problem is, Caroline doesn't come close to having the answer.

Since she's Caroline Forbes, she decides to go with the blunt truth.

'Hayley stopped by for a chat,' she says, leaning back in her seat and silently daring Elijah to make something of her casual reference to the definitely dead, very dead, werewolf. 'She mentioned some things I think I need to run past your delightful brother.' She's thinking a different word in her head, but delightful is what comes out, all the same. Elijah raises his eyebrows in surprise, but quickly recovers himself.

'Dear girl,' he murmurs, catching her eye with his intense, honest gaze. 'I think you'll find Niklaus is more than willing to answer any questions you might have, however unusual the source. You've been very much missed, in your absence, Caroline.' Elijah hesitates momentarily, so that Caroline can practically see him considering his next words in his mind before he speaks them. 'I hope you will decide to stay awhile, see if—despite your reservations—there's a future in this family for you after all. I think you'll see that you're wanted. Needed, even.'

Caroline shrugs unhappily, shoving her mug of cooling coffee into the middle of the table.

'He's just a baby. He—'

'You misunderstand me, Caroline,' Elijah interrupts her. His lip curls into a faint smile. 'I was not speaking of my nephew.'

:::

Klaus isn't difficult to track down—when he's taking a break from manipulating or maiming the local supernatural community he's pretty much a homebody these days. The second time Caroline turns up at the mansion (okay, so she left the first time before she even got to the top of the driveway) she finds him there, in the front parlour with a willowy strawberry-blonde fainting in his lap. His eyes are tinged with yellow as he glances up, face twisting in half delight half hesitation. She watches as he casually wipes up the blood smeared round his mouth and stands up. The girl slips to the floor; forgotten leftovers. It appals and fascinates her in equal measure.

'Nice,' she grates out, wary of the predatory lean of Klaus's body, fresh from the feed. 'Good to know some things don't change.'

Klaus inclines his head and ignores the jibe. It's pointless anyway, Caroline knows, because he's been too deeply ingrained in her bones for too long now. He sees her antagonism for what it is (fear, feeling, recognition) and he drinks it down, luxuriating in her attention whatever form it comes in, so she can't win. Not unless she leaves, and she tried that already, didn't she? Well, as soon as she gets some answers she can do it again.

'Caroline.' Oh, and she loathes the way his accent slips lazily over her name. 'You're back.'

'I'm not back.'

Klaus grins, showing dimples. Fucking lethal. His voice is quiet, but pleased.

'I beg to differ, love. Here you are, in the bosom of the family home. No foul play on my part necessary to get you here.'

Caroline's eyes narrow.

'You think I came back for you?' She scoffs. 'Are you nuts?'

Now it's Klaus's turn to level a bad tempered, hurt gaze in Caroline's direction.

'Well pardon me for trying to extend the olive branch, after you skipped out so hastily on us.' His voice is deceptively even. It sends chills to Caroline's spine, her vampire instincts ready to submit in the face of an alpha of her species. The woman in her is however quite ready to throw down if necessary, and she's had enough of giving in.

'I owe you nothing,' she says, stoically. 'You kept me prisoner in this city for months. I hate you.'

'So why the visit then?' Klaus drawls, eyes cold and head tilted as he runs an assessing eye over the only woman the Spirits were sure he would not harm or kill, the only vessel they deemed safe for their special child to grow in. She is hurt; bitterness in her tone, exhaustion in her stance, sorrow behind her eyes. He sees all this, but it does not dim Caroline's beauty. He wants her more than anything—more than nearly anything—in existence.

'You owe me some answers,' Caroline says.

Klaus doesn't reply, but blinks. Waits.

'You've been keeping things from me,' she accuses. Then, with a sigh: 'No more lies and manipulations, Klaus. You got what you wanted already. This time you have to tell me everything.'

Klaus stays frozen a moment longer, then gives a small mirthless chuckle, glancing up at the ceiling for absolution. He presses his hands briefly together, bringing them to his mouth, as if deciding what to say is difficult for him, for once.

'Caroline,' he finally speaks, 'I know you don't believe this, but it was never about getting my own way. I wanted so badly to share everything with you, but you weren't ready to hear it back then. You were dealing with so much anger and hurt and I didn't want this knowledge to be the thing that broke you. I didn't feel there was any way I could talk to you about it.' He looks at her so earnestly she almost lets herself care. 'I just wanted to spare you from any more pain.'

She doesn't care. Lord, does she not care. She just wants him to put her world back on its axis, ease her mind, so she can go back to Amsterdam, or somewhere new, and forget about him... them.

'Well great job you did there,' Caroline says, mockingly. She walks a wide circle around Klaus and the unconscious human on the floor, too hyped up to keep still. 'Instead I had to hear what were some some pretty fucked up accusations from the ghostly mouth of your dead werewolf babymomma.'

At this declaration, Klaus's face twists into a truly satisfying visage of confusion and alarm, but Caroline is just getting started.

'I really don't appreciate that wench haunting me from the afterlife, but you know what I appreciate even less?' She doesn't give Klaus a chance to answer before ploughing on. 'That would be having the blissful peace of my new, drama-free life disturbed by Hayley telling me that...that child' (she stumbles over even the vocal allusion to him; Klaus doesn't know why it tears at his heart so much) 'is somehow connected to me by some mystical witchy crap. Or that in the long months of my incarceration as your baby incubator you somehow never found the time to tell me that you know a hell of a lot more about all of this than you let on.'

Caroline takes a deep, shuddering breath. Tears sting in her eyes but she will not, will not, give Klaus the satisfaction of seeing her undone.

'That is her child,' she grits our, though clenched teeth. 'Hayley's child. Your child. Not mine. He was never mine and I will not,' and, dammit, those traitorous tears are getting awfully close to falling, 'have the rest of my immortal life haunted by stupid guilt trips,' oh, yep, there they go now, 'from your stupid dead lover telling me that I am responsible for that your child's wellbeing.'

Caroline knows her voice is dangerously close to shouting now, but these pent up emotions had to burst through her carefully constructed dam sometime and it looks like sometime has arrived at the most inopportune moment.

'I carried him and delivered him safely into this world,' she cries. 'What more do you want from me? What more do the fucking witches and their spirits want from me?'

'Caroline,' Klaus starts, his eyes bright and his body language strangely placating, like he is trying to soothe a frightened, cornered animal. It's what she feels like. She wants to lash out and attack him, claw him to death.

She can't let him speak. Not yet.

'You can't have anymore of me,' she says, angrily. 'I don't owe you anything. I just—' Forcing her mouth shut, she makes an obvious attempt to get herself back under control. Maybe it works. 'I just want you to tell me the truth Klaus, the whole truth, and then I can...'

'You can what, Caroline,' Klaus says softly. He moves the barest amount towards her. 'You can leave your son behind as you disappear off into the night again?' Caroline's head snaps up; pain, horror and denial warring in her eyes. 'Because he is, you know,' Klaus admits gently. 'Your son, Caroline.'

It knocks the wind right out of her sails and she sits down on the floor, landing heavily. The girl who was Klaus's lunch is fading fast, next to where she's sitting.

'He's not mine,' Caroline shakes her head. 'Carrying a child—surrogacy—it doesn't change a baby's DNA. You and Hayley made him.'

'See, that's the interesting thing, love.'

Klaus has a tale to tell her now. A story about a series of events that conspired to bring forth a powerful evil Sorcerer from the great beyond. A story about an Original, a werewolf and a newbie vampire who all played a part in resurrecting this ancient immortal, thrusting the world into imbalance. A story about the special child created by the Spirit Guardians of Nature to right this wrong. But this is no fairytale, and there isn't going to be a happy ending. The best they can hope for is atonement, in this life or the next.

He takes a deep breath and begins.

:::

**Many months ago...**

She's laughing. Something the Doppelganger has said, no doubt. He can see the back of Elena Gilbert's dainty teenage form as she gesticulates wildly, in the full animated flow of conversation with her friend.

Caroline's facing towards him, and she's laughing.

Klaus can't remember the last time he saw Caroline's smile, let alone directed at him. It irks him that he has to stalk her from the shadows, through the open French windows of the New Orleans apartment she shares with her Doppelganger friend, in order to see this natural, wonderful look on her face.

He knows the only reason she's still in the city is the barrier spell the witches cast on the orders of the Spirits. Not that he's complaining about that particular move, even though Caroline is furious. This way, he's able to keep her close, though he hasn't managed to talk her into moving into the Mikaelson home with his siblings and him. No matter how well he's argued that he can better protect her there. The stubborn young vampire has insisted on maintaining her own apartment with her friend, and has made every effort to keep Klaus as far away from it as possible. The only concession that Klaus has been able to threaten, cajole and bully her into is that she will move into his home for the final weeks of her pregnancy, to have the baby with the assistance of the witches and the support of his family. He'd even had to agree that the bloody Doppelganger would be welcome too.

Klaus has done everything he can think of to get Caroline out of this situation, but not even he can gainsay the Guardians of Nature itself. And he's tried. For Caroline, he's tried. Failing that, he's done everything he can to make her pregnancy as stress free an experience as possible. Not that he's had cause to be an expert in these things, but bloody hell he has tried to help.

A beautiful apartment, with every convenience she could want for. A housekeeper and a cook, who she has turned away, accusing him of sending people to spy on her. He's threatened the witches extremely nastily to make sure they tend to Caroline's supernatural neonatal care arrangements as if she were their own loved one.

Through it all, Caroline snarls and glowers and sometimes, worst of all, cries. He is gut-wrenchingly aware just how much she loathes being forced to carry his child; how much she loathes Klaus himself right now. He thinks about telling her, the truth sometimes, but how could he? She's a nervous wreck right now, all twisted with bitterness and frustration and he isn't about to push her over the edge with talk of upsetting the balance of nature or atonement. Not when her slim figure is now alluringly round with his child.

Yes, Klaus sees the irony there. He knows that only weeks ago he would have ripped that child from Caroline's womb himself if it had been possible to achieve any other way than by her death. He never wanted this baby. What does a monster like him want with a child?

And, yet.

Caroline's smiling.

As she laughs, her hands wrap automatically around her rounded stomach, in a protective gesture than Klaus doesn't think she knows she is doing. She's having his baby. Caroline Forbes is having his baby. He can picture her now, cradling the infant to her breast and rocking him softly to sleep.

It's ridiculous. He scoffs, irritated.

Caroline's laughing; her arms strong and protecting his unborn child.

Something long dead inside him begins to stir.


	5. Chapter 5

When Klaus finishes speaking, Caroline is quiet. Actually, she’s silent, and this isn’t a state Klaus is used to seeing Caroline in. Throughout her pregnancy the blonde vampire has repeatedly yelled at him, sometime slammed the door in his face and occasionally cried in front of him. Klaus had thought he couldn’t encounter another more distressing shade of Caroline, but this might be it. The blood has drained from her face in a most un-vampire-like way and her eyes are glassed over like a very clear, very still lake.

For a long moment, Klaus worries that he’s broken her.

The irony strikes him, that this is how he himself must have looked, the night that Lukas was born. He remembers the agonising vigil spent in this very room, with nothing to do but wait, frozen in time, listening to Caroline’s painful labour above stairs. The curse of his Original strength: able to hear everything as if he was in the room with her, but knowing that he was unwanted, nay despised even. He had just shut down, like Caroline has done now—taken his fear and longing deep inside him.

She blames him, he knows, for everything. For creating a child with Hayley, in betrayal of the tentative bond he and Caroline had been forming. For not being strong enough to save her from the witches plans. For finding joy in the midst of her own misery—coming to love and cherish the child he had never wanted in the first place.  

At least now Caroline knows the whole truth. Klaus just hopes this young beautiful woman—the mother of his child—is strong enough to live with it.

Time passes.

Klaus busies himself cleaning up his lunch before the girl starts decaying on the oriental rug. Happily, she still has a faint pulse, so he revives her with some of his potent hybrid blood and sets her in the kitchen after compelling her to leave the house when she feels better enough. Of course, her memories of their lunch date will be slightly altered, but Klaus feels cheered that his feeding habits for today have managed to live up to even Ms Forbes’s exacting standards. Plus, Elijah has been lecturing him lately about not jeopardising the delicate vampire-human alliance in the city with needless killings.  He’s midst self-congratulatory thoughts, when Caroline makes a strange hiccupping sound and looks up.

‘Sweetheart.’ Klaus crouches in front of where she’s seated on the edge of Elijah’s favourite armchair.

‘I’m being punished?’ Her voice is croaky and her eyes are haunted, but at least she’s zoned back in again. ‘Ok. Ok, I’m being punished...for killing...for the witches.’

Klaus sighs, weighing the worth of saying what he’s about to say in his head.

‘Well, technically no,’ he says. ‘You’re being punished for the fact that killing the witches happened to help establish an expression triangle of black magic and bring forth an unstoppable force of evil into the world. The mighty Sprit Guardians of Nature wouldn’t give a rat’s behind if you’d killed twelve random people off the street to save Bonnie’s life.’

Caroline blinks at him.

‘Are you deliberately being a dick?’

Klaus chuckles darkly, pleased to notice Caroline’s getting back to herself again.

‘I’m just saying, love, that the Spirits aren’t punishing you for doing a bad thing. Trust me, there’s a whole world of people that would be further up the list than you if punishing sins was the Spirits game. It’s warriors they want. They can dress it up as atonement or whatever they like—they want us to get back in the ring and fix this Silas situation and somehow,’ Klaus’s eyes darken with a flicker of fear, ‘they think Lukas is a part of that.’

Caroline flinches at the child’s name, but Klaus is just about done side-stepping around their son’s existence with her.

‘So now that you know,’ he says, ‘what are you going to do about it Caroline?’

Predictably, she glares at him.

‘What _do_ I know, Klaus? That you may or may not be telling me the truth about a conversation with spirits, some guardians of nature? That you believe they have managed to rewrite the laws of the universe to make me the part-biological mother of a child I had no part in the conception of?’ He hates how her eyes are full of pain, after all this time, when she says that. Hates how the thought of Hayley tears at her—that Caroline can’t see he cares more for the hangnail on her little finger than he ever cared about the she-wolf.

‘Not to insult your intelligence my love, but don’t you think the laws of science were rewritten to allow a thousand year old undead hybrid and a werewolf to conceive at all? To miraculously move an unborn baby from Hayley’s womb to your own? Why is this particular feat of magic harder to believe?’ Klaus takes a deep breath and tries to remain calm. ‘This is exactly why I didn’t tell you before Lukas was born.’

‘Because you didn’t think I deserved to know the truth?’ she accuses.

‘Because I was afraid it wasn’t the truth!’ Klaus yells explosively, at the top of his lungs. His eyes flash a feral yellow as his anger comes to the forefront. Taken aback, Caroline jumps from her chair and takes a step back. This is the alpha of her bloodline and her vampire instincts are hard to ignore when the hybrid’s rage is crackling in the room.

Klaus raises a placating hand and waits until he can hear the pounding of Caroline’s heart subside. The last thing he wants is to scare her away. Again.

‘Caroline, you hated carrying the child because of his connection to the wolf-girl and, maybe, to me also,’ he says, trying again. ‘I couldn’t know with any certainty if discovering that Lukas was somehow truly part of you as well would make it worse or better. I was scared that if I told you, that you would hate the idea. And I was scared more that you wouldn’t hate it, that you would be happy to be his mother. Because if it then turned out to be some kind of trickery by the Spirits...then I couldn’t stand to see that lie hurt you more than you were already hurting.’

The pause after his confession seems to ring with all the heightened emotion of the past year.

‘What’s different now?’ Caroline asks softly.

Klaus rubs his hand over his facial scruff, scratching tiredly.

‘I had tests done, after he was born. You left a hairbrush. It wasn’t difficult to get something of the wolf girl’s.’ He fixes Caroline with his most serious gaze. ‘Lukas has my DNA and, yes, he has Hayley’s too. I don’t know how it’s possible—how any of this is possible—but, Caroline, he has your DNA as well. You are Lukas’s mother.’ Klaus huffs quietly and glances away, overcome with this uncharacteristic display of emotional honesty. ‘If I didn’t know it from the test I can tell it from your son’s face. You’re written all over it.’

The air is stiff with Caroline’s quiet fury, Klaus’s raw wanting and a healthy dose of helplessness between both of them.  Right on time, there comes a gurgling, snuffling noise followed by a delighted little squeal. Caroline’s fingers twitch, even as she wills herself not to react.

There’s no baby monitor in this house. No need, with up to three pairs of Original-strength vampire ears in the house at any time. Even Caroline’s young vampire hearing is capable of picking up the sound of a waking child wriggling in his crib in the nursery upstairs—she’s been exerting more effort blocking it out this past hour than she would have been to listen closely.  While she was working so hard to tune it all out, she didn’t notice the noises coming closer. So when a dark-haired teenager appears in the doorway, cradling a chubby-cheeked baby boy in her arms, Caroline is taken awkwardly, appallingly by surprise.

The teenager stops short at the sight of Caroline, who has already backed up almost to the wall in what Klaus can only describe as a horribly failed attempt to look casual. If it wasn’t so heartbreaking, it would be funny.

Klaus sighs, and gestures the girl carrying Lukas into the room.  His smile as he moves to greet his son is completely genuine. Taking the boy into his arms, he plants a tiny kiss on an equally tiny nose, and bounces the child gently until Lukas is giggling and blowing happy spit bubbles in his father’s face. His father, the mass-murdering hybrid megalomaniac, Caroline thinks uncharitably.  Klaus pulls a funny face that Lukas apparently finds hilarious, and it’s difficult to sustain such dark thoughts in the presence of this level of innocence. She tries though, if only as a distraction from the smell of the child she can’t bring herself to look at: the sweet scent of baby alongside the earthy tones of a little wolf and, underneath it all, the subtle fragrance of rich, powerful magic.   

‘Caroline, this is Davina,’ Klaus says, gesturing between the two women who, on the surface, could be close to the same age. ‘She’s a young witch prodigy and, luckily for us, she loves children. Davina’s been gracious enough to lend us her services as a supernaturally skilled _au pair_. She looks after Lukas a couple of days a week, when Rebekah and Elijah have other business to take care of. We don’t like to leave Lukas without a couple of pairs of powerful hands around, where possible. Just in case, love.’

Caroline has to admire his audacity in the way he casually explains this to her, as if his childcare arrangements are anything to do with her. Before she can bite out a retort, Klaus is speaking again.

‘Davina, this is Caroline. She’s Lukas’s mother. You should respect her directions concerning Lukas as you would my own.’

Caroline can’t help the little indrawn breath that overtakes her at that pronouncement. Her eyes snap to Klaus, hollow and exhausted with this whole situation.

She can feel Davina’s curious eyes on her, but the young witch seems to accept Klaus’s statement without argument. Of course, since she is a New Orleans witch, she probably knows more about the whole fucked up situation than Caroline herself does. She feels a hot rush of resentment at the Mikaelson’s for allowing a witch to look after Lukas, after everything they did to her. She tamps down on that feeling, quickly, pushing it down with all the other hurtful things that live in the space between her heart and her stomach these days. It’s not the Mikaelson’s job to carry her grudges and anyway, she reminds herself, Lukas is nothing to do with her.

Except, maybe he is.

Maybe, if everything Klaus says is true—and that’s a big fat if—then this kid could be part of her. Caroline nourished him in her womb and gave birth to him, but she never thought any part of her went with him when she pushed him from her body. She never thought she got to keep anything of him for herself. Part of her is suddenly desperate to look at him. She wants to know if what Klaus says is true.  Will she see herself in Lukas’s face, alongside Hayley and Klaus and the rest of the supernatural genetic melting pot these damn Spirit Guardians made a little boy from?  

If she does, what does that mean? Does that make her a mother? Caroline has seen magic do some crazy powerful things in this world—create an immortal species of undead blood-drinkers, turn men into wolves and create a supernatural holding cell on the Other Side of death—but can it make her a mom? She doesn’t know how she wants that question answered right now. One thing is certain about Lukas: Klaus Mikaelson is his father. That comes with a lot of issues of its own, and Caroline doesn’t even know how to start unravelling this whole mess.

Klaus is still holding Lukas, waiting patiently for her to get her shit together. She’s vaguely aware of Davina telling Klaus off—

_‘I may have spelled the nursery so Lukas won’t get woken up by your noise but it would be nice if you practiced not yelling at every visitor, in preparation for the time he’s going to start crawling and walking. I can’t soundproof the whole house against your obnoxiousness and maybe, I dunno, you want to think about setting a better example for your kid. Hey, is that fresh blood on the carpet?’_

—and a part of her is deeply impressed and intrigued to know more about a sixteen year old who has the nerve to rebuke the Original Hybrid, but as she listens to Klaus’s mild _‘sod off’_ to Davina’s lecturing and smiles courteously when Davina excuses herself to get on with some college work in her bedroom, the biggest part of Caroline is more actively engaged in a full scale internal meltdown.        

With Davina gone and Lukas settled comfortably in his arms, Klaus levels a pleading look at Caroline. He takes a tentative step towards her and sighs as she automatically takes a step further back.

‘Caroline,’ Klaus says, quietly and gently. ‘Can you please look at him, at least?’

‘Klaus—’ She gestures, helplessly, trying to convey how much her answer to that question is a world of no. She can’t help it though. The child is right there in front of her, wriggling against the muscles of Klaus’s chest and arms, and her eyes flicker to him, totally without her permission.

Clear blue eyes framed with blond lashes blink up at her and Caroline doesn’t know what to do with the tight ball of anger that’s been festering inside of her, because it can’t be here, not with him, but she’s not sure she’s capable of letting it go.

Lukas is beautiful and baby soft and chubby faced and perfect. Klaus is standing very still, as if afraid Caroline will bolt, and the kid is blinking playfully up at her, gurgling nonsense noises in her generally direction. One of his little hands comes up and he kind of shakes it towards Caroline. Instinctively she starts towards him, but something brings her up short just before she can reach out and touch him.

Jolting her head up Caroline suddenly she realises she’s standing closer to Klaus then she has been, voluntarily, in a long time. Their eyes meet and Klaus’s deep blue gaze is full of naked wanting and frustration and too much feeling for her to deal with.

‘Caroline,’ he says, and she knows he is willing her not to run. They are close enough that she can almost feel the puff of his breath on her face. It’s difficult to think this close to him. She hates him. She hates what he’s done. She—She has lots of complicated feelings for this man that she can’t let herself think about and they are totally separate but at the same time totally wrapped up in this child in front of her. She wants... she wants so many things so very much, and one of them is right here, if she can work out how to do this. She’s too hurt though. All she feels is angry and she just wants it all to stop.

‘Caroline, love,’ Klaus is saying. ‘Please. Just tell me what you’re thinking.’

‘I can’t.’

To her horror, Caroline feels tears in her eyes. She tried to wipe them away, quickly, but its times like this that a vampire’s heightened emotions are nobody’s friend and she’s full-on crying before she can get in front of it.

She’s not sure whether she or Klaus look more appalled at this turn of events. The hybrid makes a movement like he’s going to try and hug her or something totally ridiculous like that, so Caroline stumbles back out of his reach before anything more awkward can happen.

‘Please, just leave me alone,’ Caroline chokes out, through gulping little sobs, and Klaus’s face just crumples and it’s gut-wrenchingly awful. Lukas, perhaps sensing the unrest around him, starts to whinge and when Klaus glances down to tend to his son Caroline takes the opportunity to vamp-speed out of the house. This time she doesn’t plan on stopping until she gets the hell out of this cursed city.

She needs to breathe.

She needs time to think.  


	6. Chapter 6

'I don't think there's a right or wrong answer,' Elena says, carefully.

They are in a roadside bar somewhere between New Orleans' airport and Baton Rouge. Elena, bless her, had hopped on a plane as soon as Caroline called and, what with Caroline wanting to get out of Mikaelson territory for a while, they got off the main drag and decided to put a chunk of Route 61 behind them before pulling the rental car over.

Now, Caroline's slid right to the back of a darkened booth, nursing her fifth glass of bourbon and Elena is next to her, their legs pressed comfortingly together in the easy way of best friends.

'We're way outside of the usual rules here. Whatever you decide to do, you know I'll support you, Care. We all will. You're not alone.'

'Do you think Klaus is telling the truth? What if Lukas,' Caroline pauses, wrapping her tongue loosely around the name, 'is somehow partly my baby? Elena, what if I've abandoned my own child? What if I can never be the mother he needs me to be?'

'You're Caroline Forbes,' Elena says, squeezing her friend's hand. 'There's nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it. It's not too late to be there for Lukas if that's what you chose to do. As for Klaus telling the truth? You can ask to see the DNA test he had carried out, I guess, but...Care. Maybe you should try to spend some time with Lukas.  
Regardless of how magic may or may not have linked you genetically, Klaus is offering you the chance to be Lukas's mom.' Elena is no Klaus fan, but she so Caroline knows this has to be from the heart. 'It's the one thing we thought was taken away from us forever—the opportunity to be parents.'

'With Klaus though?' Caroline blurts out. 'Co-parenting with the Original Hybrid? Gah. How is this happening to me?' She lets her head fall to her arms on the table, next to her empty glass.

'Sure, because you hate him so much.'

'I do,' Caroline mumbles into her arms.

'Well, yeah,' Elena says, 'but you don't only hate him. There's a thin line, don't they say?'

'I—' Caroline stops. Turning her head, which still rests on her folded arms, she looks sadly up at her fellow newbie vamp. 'I don't know what I feel for him. I've been so angry at him since I found out about the baby. I've hated him so much.'

Elena nods.

'I know, and I don't blame you. I was right there alongside you Care, and I know how much you were hurting. Just think for a minute though, about why you were so angry at Klaus. Even more angry than you were at the witches who kept you trapped in the city, who took away your vampire abilities for all that time, who forced the pregnancy on you in the first place.'

'It was his fault though.' Caroline unfurls her body like some kind of graceful blonde assassin, stretching back against the edge of the booth.

Elena laughs, humourlessly. 'I'm the last person to give Klaus credit, but we both know he'd have done anything to make you feel better those months we were stuck in Nola. There's a reason you've been so angry with Klaus and it's probably more complicated than you want to deal with right now, but—'

'He betrayed me,' Caroline cuts in. Her words linger, bright and painful in smoky air, and she claps a hand over her mouth. Dismayed, her eyes turn to Elena.  
'It's ok, Care,' the doppelganger says, gently. 'There's no judgement between us. You can say it, if you want to.' Caroline takes a deep breath and blinks back the wetness in her eyes.

'He told me he loved me and I couldn't deal with it. I wasn't ready. I might never be ready—he's Klaus—but that didn't stop me feeling these confusing, intense things for him. I mean, he deliberately and methodically destroyed my relationship with Tyler and yet, somehow, I ended up caring for him. Then he made a baby with someone else. With a girl I hated, who he knew had hurt me.'

'I know,' Elena says, comfortingly.

'I get that he didn't expect to be able to get someone pregnant, but it was still his fault. And his timing sucked,' Caroline continues. 'He couldn't stop the witches doing what they did and then— oh, god.'

'Then he was happy about it,' Elena finishes, for her.

Caroline nods, face crumpling.

'I know that's awful to resent someone for being happy about their own child being born. What kind of monster am I?'

'What kind of monsters are we all?' Elena says, mildly. 'I'm in love with a man who murders his way through his feelings. We've all got more blood on our hands than we want to think about. It makes me think that having a few dodgy mood swings, eight months into a surrogate pregnancy you didn't sign up for, isn't exactly the worst offence.'

Caroline laughs: a weak, slightly nasal little sound, but it's a start.

'All I know is I'm sick to death of feeling angry and guilty at the same time. I couldn't even look at the baby earlier. He's an innocent in all this. I managed about three minutes in the room with him before I bolted.' She slides the empty whisky tumbler back and forth along the edge of the table, pushing it between her hands. 'I wouldn't even know where to start.'

'I think the important thing is decide that you want to start at all,' Elena says. 'It's totally up to you. Do you want to be a part of Lukas's life?'

It seems like forever as she waits for the blonde vampire to answer.

'I'm barely nineteen,' Caroline says, finally. 'I mean, yeah,' she glances furtively around to check who might be within human earshot, 'I'm a vampire. Which means I'm either seventeen forever, or ageless, or... I don't even know. My point is, if I was still human, I would never have been thinking about having a child yet. Now, though? This is almost certainly the only chance I'll ever have to be a mom. And this chance comes with Klaus and the whole Original family as part of the package. Even putting aside the ridiculously confusing feelings I maybe have for Klaus, the Mikaelson's are...You know.'

'Trouble,' Elena supplies, helpfully.

'Understatement of the millennium.'

'No-one blames you for being cautious, Care. You'd be an idiot if you didn't think about it. That family has serious issues. So much fear and violence and ego. Getting involved with any of them is, well, complicated.'

The girls are silent for a while, both thinking about the implications of raising a child in the midst of Mikaelson-style drama.

'The thing is,' Caroline finally says, 'if Lukas is in any small part my son, then does any of that other stuff really matter?'

:::  
**Six months ago ******

Caroline feels big as a house, these days. No matter how many times Elena assures her that she wears the baby bump well, that she's lucky her ass is still as shapely as ever or that her hair and skin are glowing, all she feels is huge. As a vampire, Caroline's got used to impeccable balance, superhuman strength, never feeling cold, or tired, or bloated. As a vampire passing for a nineteen year old college student, she knows how to go through the motions. She sleeps out of habit, eats for enjoyment and stumbles occasionally to keep up appearances. Sure, she hurts sometimes. Being undead doesn't seem to have prevented her from pain, either emotional or physical. Bullets, arrows and knives hurt: she's neither impervious to harm, nor invincible. She mends though. So far, she's mended.

This is different. This is the first time in over two years that her body has changed at all. The witches of New Orleans drew on power from their Ancestral Spirits to put her in this magical vampire-pregnancy bubble of weirdness, and Caroline has been in an unsettling half-vampire, half-human limbo for too long. Her vampire strength and enhances senses seem to come and go, like a TV on the fritz, and her ankles are swollen. She hasn't drunk blood without gagging for weeks, and she's got insane cravings for satsumas and potato chips. She still heals like a vampire, but is helpless against the pregnancy hormones sweeping her body. And she thinks she's aged. It's difficult to tell, with the changes to her body making things seem different anyway, but Caroline is pretty sure her face has gone through eight months of tiny human changes. That, at least, is a sliver of good news. Being seventeen forever can be somewhat limiting, unless you want to spend an eternity repeating high school.

The witches have been round to the apartment today: Agnes and her great-niece, Sophie. Caroline is beyond done with their annoying pseudo antenatal regime. Some actual doctors would feel like a blessing right about now, though she knows, of course, that's out of the question. She hates the way that old Crone looks at her with a mixture of excitement and pity in her eyes; hates the way they make her feel like a caged animal and a scared teenager all at the same time.

Elena's gone out for a walk—probably phoning the Salvatore's or Bonnie for the Mystic Falls update, since she knows it upsets Caroline to overhear the conversations with their friends back home. She knows everyone is worried about her, but she just doesn't want to deal with their sympathy or their questions right now. She's barely holding on, and if she has to talk about it with them she doesn't trust herself not to break down. Elena has been a stellar gatekeeper, keeping them all at bay—though at times it's been difficult to stop each of her friends driving to New Orleans to see for themselves that Caroline is ok. She misses them, she really does, but she just can't, right now.

Caroline is on the balcony resting her swollen ankles when she feels more than notices eyes on her, and glances down to see Klaus on the pavement below. He looks flawless in jeans, a soft sweater, and his usual blond stubble and she still hates him. As always, when he sees her these days, there's a weird hopefulness about him that, frankly, pisses her off.

'What do you want?' she asks with a sigh. 'Didn't like something in the report the witch-bitches gave you after their visit this morning?'

'Can I come up?'

Another huff.

'Whatever. It's your apartment, I'm just the girl trapped here.'

It makes him wince, and Caroline feels a little burst of satisfaction. Looking around to make sure the quiet residential road is witness-free, Klaus leaps to the balcony rather than wasting time on the stairs.

'You're not trapped in the apartment, you have the whole city,' he says.

'Should I should feel grateful my cage is so generously sized?'

'I didn't mean...It's not for much longer, sweetheart. I don't like it any more than you do.'

Rage explodes behind Caroline's eyes; red and white and blisteringly hot.

'You do,' she hisses. 'Don't pretend we're on the same side, here, not anymore. When the witches first did this mystical surrogate voodoo you said you wanted to help me. You said you'd do anything to get this baby out of me. What happened, Klaus? One trip to rough up the coven and suddenly the Original Asshole decides not to fight the witches anymore? What changed?' She's working herself up into quite the temper now, voice raised louder than is wise when discussing the supernatural world, even in the French Quarter. 'You let them trap me in the city and don't even pretend you would undo it if you could. You like me being here, like this. You love it!'

Caroline's face crumples into angry tears and Klaus fidgets on the spot like it's all he can do not to pull her into his arms and try to soothe her. She doesn't want him to touch her.  
She can't look at him without the image of him on top of Hayley, inside Hayley, making a baby with Hayley springing into his mind. Though, God knows, he's probably had other lovers in the past few months, at least they have been after she decided to hate him and she doesn't have to experience the love children of those unions growing inside her own body. Y'know, hopefully.

'I don't love it,' he says, defiantly. 'Not like this. I would never have wanted this for you. To have your choices taken away like this. I promise you, when the time is right, the witches will suffer for their actions.'

Caroline angrily wipes at the tears on her face, spoiling the sleeve of her flowing gypsy blouse.

'I don't need any help from you,' she says. 'If I want to kill Agnes or anyone else, I'll do it myself.'

'Of course, sweetheart.' Caroline swears she hears a slight tone of amusement in Klaus's voice, despite the situation. It should annoy her, but she's rapidly sliding back from anger to detached coldness: the only two emotions she seems to be able to summon in the Hybrid's presence these days.

'So what do you want? Here to dispense more advice on antenatal care? I think the witches have done the topic to death.'

Klaus sighs.

'I came to talk about the birth,' he says, carefully.

'You've some thoughts on that, too, huh? What with your vast experience with childbirth?'

'I just want to do what I can to make sure you and the baby are safe. Agnes said it could happen soon now. I think it's time for you to move into the mansion.'

'I'd rather not.'

'Caroline, please.' Klaus rubs his hand tiredly over his five o clock shadow. 'I don't want to argue. You're about to bring my son into this world. I just want to make the next few weeks as easy for you—for all of us—as possible.'

'Seems like the whole thing's been a little easier for some of us than others,' Caroline says, archly. 'I don't see why I can't stay here.'

'This apartment is ten times harder to defend than the house is, Caroline. There's enemies around every sodding corner and I can't have my attention divided between two locations. What about when the baby is born, love? Doesn't it make more sense for you to already be set up at the house, where his nursery is, where my siblings will be there to help and protect you both?'

He ignores Caroline's unladylike snort and continues to bargain.

'If you aren't happy there after the baby is born, I promise we can talk again about options.'

If Klaus doesn't realise by now that Caroline's not planning on staying in this city a second longer than the witches barrier spell lasts, then he really hasn't been paying attention. The truth is, Caroline supposes, that while she's been focusing on how best she can get through the pregnancy, Klaus has been getting ready to become a dad. Caroline's plans don't extend past the moment she pushes the child out of her body, but Klaus has a nursery ready, full of designer baby clothes than Rebekah has lovingly stockpiled and the toys  
that Elijah thinks will best aid his niece or nephews development.

The birth of this child means the world to Klaus and Caroline knows it's best to pick her battles when it comes to the Original Hybrid. He may be tip-toeing around her right now, but Caroline knows better than to underestimate his stubbornness or temper.

'Fine,' she says, coldly. 'I'll come and stay at the house until the baby is born, if you promise not to be up in my grill every moment of every day. That includes your siblings. I need space to breathe.'

'I promise. I'll speak to Rebekah and Elijah as well. ' Klaus's eyes flash with relief and, if he was human, she's sure his body would have visibly relaxed right now. He expected more of a fight.

'And Elena comes too.'

'But of course,' Klaus says, flashing his dimples and bouncing lightly on his heels. 'I'd never dream of trying to separate you and the doppelganger.'

'Good,' Caroline says, then pauses slightly. 'Elena's going to be there with me for the birth.'

Klaus smiles.

'We both will, love.'

'No,' Caroline says, and this time her voice is steel. 'I don't want you there. Not in the room.'

'It's my child, Caroline,' Klaus says, features darkening.

'I know, and I also know I can't stop you, but I swear to you, Klaus. If you don't give me the respect of my own choice in this, I will never, ever forgive you. Not if I survive to be a thousand. I will hate you for the rest of my existence.'

:::  
**Now ******

The barest whisper of a sneakered foot on plush carpet has Klaus wide awake and down the corridor to Lukas's bedroom in less than three seconds. As he moves, he's counting heartbeats in the house; hearing the comforting tick tick from his son's little heart, the unhurried, restful thud thud thud where Davina is asleep in her room and, finally, Elijah in front of him, already looking into Lukas's nursery. It's impressive really, the way Klaus goes from hybrid-speed to completely motionless, as his elder brother raises his hand to halt him outside the nursery doorway.

Davina's anti-intruder wards haven't triggered an alarm but, despite his trust in the young Claire witch, Klaus knows that however powerful the magic there is inevitably some stronger magic waiting around the corner to undo it. Elijah doesn't seem worried by what he sees though, so Klaus takes his cue from his brother and hovers silently just outside the room. The door is ajar; the room inside illuminated by Lukas's nightlight, without which the Mikaelson's would still have perfect clarity of vision. Elijah draws back to allow Klaus a view, lips curving into an almost-smile and his hand noiselessly squeezing Klaus's shoulder as he does so. There are only a handful of people whose presence won't trip Davina's mystical perimeter spell, and one of them is in the nursery.

Lukas is still asleep in his crib, and Klaus watches as Caroline sinks into the chair at the boy's side and simply looks at the child she helped bring into the world. Klaus can't see his son's face from this angle, but he can picture the angelic, peaceful look on his face as he slumbers. He can imagine Lukas's beautiful lashes and soft baby cheeks. It simultaneously breaks and rebuilds his ancient, dark heart every time he looks at his son. If Caroline feels a fraction of what he does, looking at Lukas, then she will find a way to open her heart to him.

Caroline pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and Klaus can see the tear rolling down her cheek. The darkness is peaceful, but in Caroline's eyes a thousand battles are taking place. She watches Lukas sleep and, as the night wraps around them, Klaus Mikaelson leans against the doorjamb and keeps his own silent vigil of hope.


End file.
